The Academy Awards, more popularly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry. Given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the awards are an international recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the "Academy Award of Merit", although more commonly referred to by its nickname, the "Oscar". The statuette depicts a knight rendered in the Art Deco style.
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country in Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south; Iran to the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north; and China to the northeast. Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is 32 million, mostly composed of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American actor, filmmaker, businessman, author, and former politician and professional bodybuilder. He served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 to 2011. As of 2020, he is the most recent Republican governor of California.
William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs and pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Diana, Princess of Wales was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, and the mother of Prince William and Prince Harry. Diana's activism and glamour made her an international icon and earned her an enduring popularity as well as an unprecedented public scrutiny, exacerbated by her tumultuous private life.
Netflix, Inc. is an American media-services provider and production company headquartered in Los Gatos, California, founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California. The company's primary business is its subscription-based streaming service which offers online streaming of a library of films and television programs, including those produced in-house. As of April 2019, Netflix had over 148 million paid subscriptions worldwide, including 60 million in the United States, and over 154 million subscriptions total including free trials. It is available worldwide except in mainland China, Syria, North Korea, and Crimea. The company also has offices in India, Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. Netflix is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, Mozilla Corporation. Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. In 2017, Firefox began incorporating new technology under the code name Quantum to promote parallelism and a more intuitive user interface. Firefox is officially available for Windows 7 or newer, macOS, and Linux. Its unofficial ports are available for various Unix and Unix-like operating systems including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, illumos, and Solaris Unix. Firefox is also available for Android and iOS; however, the iOS version uses the WebKit layout engine instead of Gecko due to platform limitations, as with all other iOS web browsers.
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos AveiroGOIH ComM is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward for Serie A club Juventus and captains the Portugal national team. Often considered the best player in the world and widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Ronaldo has won five Ballons d'Or and four European Golden Shoes, both of which are records for a European player. He has won 29 trophies in his career, including six league titles, five UEFA Champions Leagues, one UEFA European Championship, and one UEFA Nations League. A prolific goalscorer, Ronaldo holds the records for the most goals scored in the UEFA Champions League (128) and the joint-most goals scored in the UEFA European Championship (9). He is one of the few recorded players to have made over 1,000 professional career appearances and has scored over 700 senior career goals for club and country.
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.
George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. As well as "George Bush", Bush is frequently referred to as George W. Bush, Bush Junior, or Bush 43 to distinguish him from his father, George H. W. Bush, who served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993.
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Its southern border with the United States, stretching some 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world's longest bi-national land border. Canada's capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at age 15, she signed her first record deal. Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008. Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US's best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.
Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg is an American actor, producer, businessman, model, rapper, singer and songwriter. He is also known by his former stage name Marky Mark, from his career as frontman for the group, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, with whom he released the albums Music for the People (1991) and You Gotta Believe (1992).
Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip (Palestine) and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, across the Red Sea lies Saudi Arabia, and across the Mediterranean lie Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, although none share a land border with Egypt.
Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television judge. After singing in church during her childhood, she pursued a career in gospel music as a teenager. Perry signed with Red Hill Records and released her debut studio album Katy Hudson under her birth name in 2001, which was commercially unsuccessful. She moved to Los Angeles the following year to venture into secular music after Red Hill ceased operations and she subsequently began working with producers Glen Ballard, Dr. Luke, and Max Martin. After adopting the stage name Katy Perry and being dropped by The Island Def Jam Music Group and Columbia Records, she signed a recording contract with Capitol Records in April 2007.
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for reinventing herself throughout her career and for her versatility in numerous areas of the entertainment industry. Gaga began performing as a teenager, singing at open mic nights and acting in school plays. She studied at Collaborative Arts Project 21, through New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, before dropping out to pursue a music career. When Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract, she worked as a songwriter for Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where Akon helped her sign a joint deal with Interscope Records and his own label KonLive Distribution in 2007. She rose to prominence the following year with her debut album, the electropop record The Fame, and its chart-topping singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". The album was reissued as The Fame Monster (2009), which included the successful singles "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro".
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in Westminster, London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 22,000 staff in total, more than 16,000 of whom are in public sector broadcasting. The total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff are included.
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson is an American actress and singer. The world's highest-paid actress since 2018, she has made multiple appearances in the Forbes Celebrity 100. Her films have grossed over $14.3 billion worldwide, making Johansson the third-highest-grossing box office star of all time. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a Tony Award and a BAFTA Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Minecraft is a sandbox video game created by Swedish developer Markus Persson, released by Mojang in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft in 2014. It is the single best-selling video game of all time, selling over 180 million copies across all platforms by late 2019, with over 112 million monthly active players.
The first known case in the United States of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was confirmed on January 20, 2020, in a 35-year-old man who had returned from Wuhan, China, on January 15. The White House Coronavirus Task Force was established on January 29. Two days later, the administration of President Donald Trump declared a public health emergency and announced restrictions on travelers arriving from China. By March 12, diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. exceeded 1,000. The were more than 2,000 cases by March 14, over 4,000 by March 16 and 8,000 by March 18. Of the 155 deaths in the country, 55 occurred in the state of Washington, with 29 of those at a nursing home. Cases have been confirmed in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. As of March 17, only the territories of American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands had no confirmed cases. Deaths from the pandemic have occurred in 21 states with 12 having more than one death. President Trump declared the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic a national emergency on March 13.
